Related papers: Limits to Energy Conversion
Underlying the classical thermodynamic principles are analogous microscopic laws, arising from the fundamental axioms of quantum mechanics. These define quantum thermodynamic variables such as quantum work and heat and characterize the…
According to the second law, the efficiency of cyclic heat engines is limited by the Carnot bound that is attained by engines that operate between two thermal baths under the reversibility condition whereby the total entropy does not…
What is the interface temperature during phase transition (for instance, from liquid to vapor)? This question remains fundamentally unresolved. In the modeling of heat transfer problems with no phase change, the temperature and heat flux…
Motivated by the notion that the mathematics of gravity can be reproduced from a statistical requirement of maximal entropy, we study the consequence of introducing an entropic source term in the Einstein-Hilbert action. For a spatially…
The energy conversion efficiency of far-from-equilibrium systems is generally limited by irreversible thermodynamic fluxes that make contact with different heat baths. For complex systems, the states of the maximum efficiency and the…
Second law of thermodynamics is applied to a few electronic processes. It is seen that the second law of thermodynamics holds good for all except one mentioned here. The classical approach, based on exact equivalence of emission and…
We define thermodynamic configurations and identify two primitives of discrete quantum processes between configurations for which heat and work can be defined in a natural way. This allows us to uncover a general second law for any discrete…
We derive general trade-off relations among the power, efficiency, and constancy for two-terminal thermoelectric systems in the linear response regime. Constancy, which quantifies the steadiness of the heat engine, is measured by its…
The first law of thermodynamics imposes not just a constraint on the energy-content of systems in extreme quantum regimes, but also symmetry-constraints related to the thermodynamic processing of quantum coherence. We show that this…
A microscopic definition of the thermodynamic entropy in an isolated quantum system must satisfy (i) additivity, (ii) extensivity and (iii) the second law of thermodynamics. We show that the diagonal entropy, which is the Shannon entropy in…
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the entropy of a closed system is non-decreasing. Discussing the Second Law in the quantum world poses new challenges and provides new opportunities, involving fundamental…
In this paper, we identify a class of time-varying port-Hamiltonian systems that is suitable for studying problems at the intersection of statistical mechanics and control of physical systems. Those port-Hamiltonian systems are able to…
We design a heat engine with multi-heat-reservoir, ancillary system and quantum memory. We then derive an inequality related with the second law of thermodynamics, and give a new limitation about the work gain from the engine by analyzing…
Thomson's formulation of the second law - no work can be extracted from a system coupled to a bath through a cyclic process - is believed to be a fundamental principle of nature. For the equilibrium situation a simple proof is presented,…
In systems described by the scattering theory, there is an upper bound, lower than Carnot, on the efficiency of steady-state heat to work conversion at a given output power. We show that interacting systems can overcome such bound and…
The second law of thermodynamics dictates that heat flows spontaneously from a high-temperature entity to a lower-temperature one. Yet, recent advances have demonstrated that quantum correlations between a system and its thermal environment…
The resource theory of thermal operations explains the state transformations that are possible in a very specific thermodynamic setting: there is only one thermal bath, auxiliary systems can only be in corresponding thermal state (free…
Recent research on the thermodynamic arrow of time, at the microscopic scale, has questioned the universality of its direction. Theoretical studies showed that quantum correlations can be used to revert the natural heat flow (from the hot…
We solve a set of selected exercises on rotational motion requiring a mechanical and thermodynamical analysis. When non-conservative forces or thermal effects are present, a complete study must use the first law of thermodynamics together…
Local master equations are a widespread tool to model open quantum systems, especially in the context of many-body systems. These equations, however, are believed to lead to thermodynamic anomalies and violation of the laws of…